Croatian tennis player Marin Cilic in tearsafter Wimbeldon final earlier this month

Tennis player Marin Cilic’s breakdown on court was panned by many, but players and trainers say it’s perfectly understandable

He held his head in his hands and sobbed into his towel. Marin Cilic was the picture of despondency, his body racked by tears and his spirit ebbing away in a flood of anger and frustration. To the world, the emotional collapse suffered by the no:6 male tennis player in the world at the Wimbledon final earlier this month might have seemed excessive, even disingenuous. After all, it was just a couple of blisters on his foot – why bang your racquet and cry your eyes out?

Later, Cilic wasn’t afraid to discuss his tears, talking about how they came from the devastation he felt at being unable to compete at 100 per cent on one of the biggest match days in his life. Sportspersons around the world nodded in fellow feeling. Because you can train and plan, but on match day, a million things can still go wrong. And when they do, mental ammunition is the only thing that can help you pick yourself up and dust yourself off. That tennis is an individual sport made it that much harder for Cilic – both, victory and loss would have been only his, and there was no one to turn to on court in his hour of stress.

Dr Shree Advani, sport and performance psychologist, has nothing but empathy for Cilic. Having worked with the likes of Pankaj Advani, PV Sindhu, Rohan Bopanna and Arjun Maini, he knows a thing or two about pressure, and what it can do to a player. And that is where mind coaching comes in. Advani believes performance on court is linked directly to the quality of training and practice, something most athletes fail to understand. “Many think that if they do an above average practice session each day they will be able to perform in every match. But we do not rise to our optimal level in battle, we sink to the levels of habits created in practice. We create our match standard in training. Matches are just a tiny reflection of the hard work behind the scenes. Cilic fell short because he still has work to do on the psychological front,” he explains.

Sometimes, that ‘work’ also includes thinking about your opponent’s challenges and what’s going on in his/ her mind, as Advani believes Cilic could have done. Yes, it was a big occasion for him, and yes, he was up against the world in that everyone was on opponent Roger Federer’s side, and yes, he wanted to win Wimbledon more than anything in the world. “But what about Federer? Cilic had nothing to lose – the pressure was on the favourite, Federer. No one expected Cilic to win. If he’d thought about that, he would have realised that it was Federer’s match to lose. Plus, he had beaten him in a final on an earlier occasion. Instead, he let the pressure get to him and started going for too much. Eventually, Federer just had to wait for him to self-destruct,” Advani explains.

Prepare and focus

Staying focused is important, particularly in an individual sport.

Never play with an eye on the finish line – just play for the next point. Tennis player Rohan Bopanna says: “It’s only about this match. Leave the goal behind. Have fun on court and don’t compare yourself to anybody else.” He has employed this technique multiple times, especially when he finds himself down. “I start with the next point as the first point and take it from there, because I can’t control what has happened. The important thing is to stay positive and let the legs move freely,” he says.

Vimal Kumar, Saina Nehwal’s coach, also says he tells her not to look too far ahead. Kumar finds that his ward is unable to accept defeat, just like many champions, as a result of which she works incredibly hard during all her training and playing sessions. “I am trying to convince her that it is not required to do all her sessions at 100 per cent intensity. But I also do not want to push this issue too much as this mentality has brought her to this level. At present, what she must keep in mind is about training smart and not like when she was training as a teenager,” he says. It’s also important to think on your feet. “The trend I have observed at the present top level is that many do not have a plan B. It is either just their way or the highway. Saina needs to take risks at certain stages in her matches against her top opponents and she is trying to simulate them in practice sessions regularly,” he says.

Pressure to perform

Kumar recalls an incident from a couple of years ago, when Chinese great Wan Yihan had an 8-1 advantage over Saina. After her three-set loss to Wang in the Asian Games in Seoul in 2014, he had worked with Saina and chalked out a strategy to how to tackle her. “In her next five matches, Saina won four out of five matches, thrashing her illustrious opponent twice at least. The last time they met, Wang admitted that it was one of the toughest matches she has ever played. Watching Saina playing to a plan and executing whatever was planned to perfection has been one of the high points of our association. Similarly, her win over Carolina Marin in Dubai World Series Finals in 2015 was another hugely creditable one as she was nursing an injury and not in peak practice.”

Srinath Prahlad, former Davis Cupper and director of SAT Sports, recalls the immense pressure he felt playing the then no:25 player at a Davis Cup tie in 1998. Mahesh Bhupathi had just played the first match, beating his opponent in straight sets. The pressure of following that with a victory was so great that Prahlad couldn’t breathe from stress. “In the end, I lost in four sets, but it ended up being a pretty tight match. I just kept hitting the ball, and when I finally won a set, I decided I wanted to be there and enjoy the match,” Prahlad recalls. The lessons he learnt that day – confidence and having fun – held him in good stead in the following months, which helped him beat Ivan Lubijic and Paradorn Srichaphan, both with good results. “I told myself that I had nothing to lose. Just deciding to give it all helped change the way I breathe, and convey a different body language on court.”

Olympian Nisha Millet agrees. A huge part of competitive swimming is mindgames, she says, where opponents will try to “stare you down” or talk loudly in the locker room about their victories and your losses. She recalls how when she was a greenhorn at her first swim meet, she was made a soft target by the experienced swimmers. “And I let that affect me,” she rues. At that time, it’s important to focus on your own strengths, and go through everything you’ve learnt in training.

“Swimmers do a lot of progressive relaxation,” she says. “The elite athletes go through the entire race in their head, practising strokes, stance and everything they’ve done in training in their head. They go through the perfect race, mentally willing their body to perform. The best swimmers are those that practice all that in their head and then and go out there and do just that.”

Techniques and rituals

That is where techniques come in handy. To block out the crowd and jibes and jeers, Millet says swimmers often wear earphones just before diving in. Others meditate.

Bopanna finds that distracting himself from match talk helps him distress and deal with the sometimes “out of control nervousness before a match”. He adds:
“Instead, I just go through my notes, my homework up to that point, and focus on what I’ve learnt and practised for in the lead-up to the match.” It was the same with Millet, who followed her mind coach’s advice and told her family to talk about things other than swimming when she would call them from out of town on the eve of a big match.

Find your ritual and use it to help you regroup, players say. Bopanna recalls having his towel pulled over his head, going through his pre-match notes in between changeovers. “I tell myself I’m playing too fast. I breathe deeply, and focus on the next point. And I go back to my game plan, to my preparation.” Prahlad points to the rituals of players in between points – some jump, someone switch racquets, others ask for a towel, still others hum songs. “The repetition of rituals helps you relax and anchor yourself. You get into a highly aroused stage that’s needed for you to perform and deliver,” he says.

Act out

Different strokes for different folks. While Saina is not outwardly aggressive, as Kumar notes, a Virat Kohli or an Andy Murray benefits from expressing himself.
This is why body language, say sportspersons, is an essential part of a winning mindset. Advani discusses the meteoric rise of badminton player PV Sindhu, who he worked with in 2013, on “aggression”. She was very hard on herself when she was losing points, but when she was winning points there was no celebration – not even a fist pump. That, Advani believes was key. “It’s ok to make errors – in fact, they’re the only guarantee in any sport/ match. The moment an athlete can accept that, he/she’ll do better. So there’s no need to beat ourselves up unnecessarily for mistakes. But when you win a point, celebrate like there’s no tomorrow,” he says.

Working on this aspect of Sindhu’s game brought about a big change in her – she went on to become the first female Indian player to win a medal at the World Championships. She had learnt two important lessons – acceptance and positive reinforcement.

Advani discusses how his brother Pankaj is “fiercely competitive”, but because of the nature of his sport Billiards, they’ve had to work on “inner instead of outer aggression”. With Maini, he worked on helping him stay ahead when he was in front in a race – something many people struggle with because chasing gives them purpose and that is lost when they’re in the lead.

For Kumar, it has been important to tell Saina that she can, from time to time, employ tactics such as delaying and disturbing the rhythm of the opponent. “I have told her that there could be cases where she could benefit from such methods without compromising good sportsman spirit during matches,” he says.

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